Some surprises on list of firms reportedly mulling webOS purchase

HP is investigating the sale of its webOS division according to sources …

Reuters is reporting that HP is investigating the possible sale of webOS. The future of the smartphone and tablet platform, acquired by HP last year when it bought Palm, has been in doubt since former HP CEO Leo Apotheker announced that HP was going to stop producing webOS phones and tablets, and possibly sell its PC division too. New CEO Meg Whitman has since said that HP will be keeping its PC division, but no decisions have been made yet about webOS.

According to Reuters, potential buyers of webOS include Amazon, RIM, Intel, IBM, and Oracle. Amazon and RIM both have tablets of their own, so the acquisition of webOS's technology and Palm's patents would seem a natural fit to bolster those companies' positions. Intel has long been investing in smartphone and tablet operating systems, and is a core sponsor of the MeeGo project, and so again, the value of webOS is clear.

IBM and Oracle, however, have little or no involvement in either the smartphone or tablet markets, making a webOS purchase hard to understand. The most likely reason for interest from these companies is the patent portfolio rather than the software itself. Oracle is currently embroiled in a legal battle with Google over Android, claiming both patent and copyright infringement. The acquisition of the Palm intellectual property would give the database company a whole new set of weapons with which to attack Android.

If webOS is indeed sold off, Reuters is suggesting that it will fetch "hundreds of millions" of dollars, falling a long way short of the $1.2 billion that HP spent buying Palm in the first place.

Wasn't webOS based heavily on Java internally? Can't find a reference for that right now, but if that dim recollection is correct, it probably contains Java related stuff that IBM or Oracle would find interesting. Both them make money providing Java environments after all.

You forgot Nikon. There is a lot of speculation about that in the photo industry.

I wonder if Apple might still be interested as well. They had originally offered $600 million for it. It might be worth a lot less now.

Wonder if Kodak isn't also interested. Heard a piece on the radio that says they're relying on patent royalties at the moment and looking at ways to monetize digital photography themselves (other than making the camera)

Why wouldn't a company like Samsung or HTC buy WebOS? Surely they see the writing on the wall with respect to Google's purchase of Motorola. WebOS seems like a good backup plan if things go sour with Android.

Here's to hoping Intel will pick it up, they can finally drop all the energy they're putting in the now defunct Meego and work on something that's more mature and way better than anything they've had in the mobile space.

You forgot Nikon. There is a lot of speculation about that in the photo industry.

I wonder if Apple might still be interested as well. They had originally offered $600 million for it. It might be worth a lot less now.

I was thinking the other day, I've yet to use a DSLR where I really like the interface. But some of the features on phones these days, tap to focus, easy emailing/uploading, touch based controls, all that kind of stuff would be amazing on a camera and could make for vastly improved user experiences. There's that massive midrange of camera users that would be all over sleeker looking cameras with less dials/buttons and a nice touch interface.

Why wouldn't a company like Samsung or HTC buy WebOS? Surely they see the writing on the wall with respect to Google's purchase of Motorola. WebOS seems like a good backup plan if things go sour with Android.

What writing?

Last I checked Google wasn't Microsoft. I think your judgement here is clouded by Microsoft's trust and monopoly convictions and the requirements that Microsoft not ship a hardware platform. Keep in mind that those requirements were set in place after Microsoft was already convicted on criminal charges.

Google, as of yet, has been convicted on charges of collusion, fraud, or monopolistic business practices. There is, as of yet, no reason to assume that Google will commit the same criminal business practices that Microsoft has committed and still tries to commit. Google tends be pretty honest, probably more so than they should be. There is no reason, as of yet, to doubt that Motorola Wireless will, in fact, be run and treated as a separate company by Google.

Intel would be neat, just from the thought of where they would bring it from a technical standpoint. Unfortunately WebOS is just slightly more alive than Meego. Why buy one defunct OS to replace another defunct OS?

Also what would Intel do with it in the consumer realm? They don't have much of a track record producing consumer products (CPU's that go into consumer products don't count :-) )

Just open source it. We need a nice foundation to offer money to that will put in a bid to open source this and get it out there for us to use. WebOS was and still is a very nice system with potential.

You forgot Nikon. There is a lot of speculation about that in the photo industry.

I wonder if Apple might still be interested as well. They had originally offered $600 million for it. It might be worth a lot less now.

Wonder if Kodak isn't also interested. Heard a piece on the radio that says they're relying on patent royalties at the moment and looking at ways to monetize digital photography themselves (other than making the camera)

Kodak is itself in danger of going out of business. They have no money for this. Rumor has it that Apple is in the running to buy their patents along with some others, or even the company itself as its market value as of now is only a measly $312 million, though their sales last year were over $7 billion.

I would love for Apple to buy it, and use it to make the iOS multitasking run like WebOS.

They don't want multasking to be so inefficient. I don't either. I'm happy the way it is now, never getting out of memory errors, and never having to switch off an app because of that. This was a major problem for WebOS

Intel would be neat, just from the thought of where they would bring it from a technical standpoint. Unfortunately WebOS is just slightly more alive than Meego. Why buy one defunct OS to replace another defunct OS?

Also what would Intel do with it in the consumer realm? They don't have much of a track record producing consumer products (CPU's that go into consumer products don't count :-) )

I don't see Intel doing anything useful with this. All of their other software initiatives have failed, I can't see this doing any better.

Actually, WebOS failed from the first day the Pre went on sale. It's only gotten worse from that point on. When consumers reject something so soundly, it's time to move on.

Why wouldn't a company like Samsung or HTC buy WebOS? Surely they see the writing on the wall with respect to Google's purchase of Motorola. WebOS seems like a good backup plan if things go sour with Android.

Google, as of yet, has been convicted on charges of collusion, fraud, or monopolistic business practices. There is, as of yet, no reason to assume that Google will commit the same criminal business practices that Microsoft has committed and still tries to commit. Google tends be pretty honest, probably more so than they should be. There is no reason, as of yet, to doubt that Motorola Wireless will, in fact, be run and treated as a separate company by Google.

The kind of counter-commonsense denials ("google is not dominant in search") and questionable praising of the competition ("Bing is the size of Google in 2007") given previous criticism and dismissal, are almost exactly the same path Microsoft followed during its antitrust probe.

You forgot Nikon. There is a lot of speculation about that in the photo industry.

I wonder if Apple might still be interested as well. They had originally offered $600 million for it. It might be worth a lot less now.

I was thinking the other day, I've yet to use a DSLR where I really like the interface. But some of the features on phones these days, tap to focus, easy emailing/uploading, touch based controls, all that kind of stuff would be amazing on a camera and could make for vastly improved user experiences. There's that massive midrange of camera users that would be all over sleeker looking cameras with less dials/buttons and a nice touch interface.

I h ave a lot of contacts in the photo industry, and while this rumor is strong, no one can figure out what Nikon would want it for. To tell the truth, the small screens on cameras are too small to allow much of a complex UI. It's basically just menus. They don't need WebOS to fix that. These are also real time OS's. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that WebOS is. So all they would use is a highly modified and simplified UI from it. Is that really worthwhile?

melgross: I hadn't realized Apple was interested last time. If they still were, would it be the third time that Apple considered buying Be, Inc. related properties?

It's kind of funny. If Be hadn't been so greedy, Apple would never have bought Next, as Be was first on their list. Gassé might be the CEO of Apple today.

Strange how that works.

And HP might've bought Apple, and waiting to be resold now.

There would be no iPhone, iPod, but there will be Newton.

That was possible. But the companies mentioned as possible suitors were IBM, who had developed a couple of OS's with Apple, such as Pink and Tagilent, and of course was a co-developer of the PPC with Apple and Motorola, and Sun, which was thought to be a good fit.

I actually think WebOS makes good sense for IBM or Oracle as a product (as opposed to patents).

The idea is to ignore the consumer space and focus solely on verticals, business, and embedded platforms. With WebOS and real business backend software, databases, and consulting IBM or Oracle could produce nice and very secure handhelds for hospitals (full HIPPA compliance), point of sale systems, inventory management, touch enabled information kiosks, car information systems, etc.

Don't try to do what everyone else is doing by going head-to-head with Apple in the consumer space. The space is crowded with Android/Amazon fighting over the bottom of the market, and Apple executes so well there is little space at the top of the market. So provide some unique capability and go for a different niche---business.

Business is willing to pay a bit more if you can meet their unique needs. Airlines are giving pilots iPads for documentation, don't you think they would have preferred to hand them a special locked down system they completely control, even if it cost $700 a seat? And WebOS with the Java infrastructure is easy to write custom in-house applications for.

So I vote for IBM or Oracle to purchase and take in the direction HP should have gone---business. It won't help the ideological fights on are and slashdot over the consumer space, but it would be a viable business model and actually provide a service people are interested in.

That was possible. But the companies mentioned as possible suitors were IBM, who had developed a couple of OS's with Apple, such as Pink and Tagilent, and of course was a co-developer of the PPC with Apple and Motorola, and Sun, which was thought to be a good fit.

Pink started life at Apple and lost out to Blue, then was spun off into a new joint venture w/IBM known as Taligent. So the original OS was entirely an Apple thing and then they added a few IBM engineers and IBM's CEO when it was spun off.

melgross: I hadn't realized Apple was interested last time. If they still were, would it be the third time that Apple considered buying Be, Inc. related properties?

As an old BeOS fan, I'd like to know how webOS is related to Be, Inc. Hadn't heard this before. Anyone care to enlighten me?

If I remember correctly Be was sold to palm in the early 2000's I don't think much of BeOs lives on in webOs. I was big into be and webOs doesn't have any of the features I remember and none of the be software runs on it from what I understand. Be was amazing and still would be amazing today. It was decades ahead of other OS's.

just wiki'd to check my facts and it looks like access co owns the beos code now.

melgross: I hadn't realized Apple was interested last time. If they still were, would it be the third time that Apple considered buying Be, Inc. related properties?

As an old BeOS fan, I'd like to know how webOS is related to Be, Inc. Hadn't heard this before. Anyone care to enlighten me?

Nothing. BeOS and Palm OS were part of palmsource that was split from the Palm Inc. Eventually Palmsource was acqured by Access and the full Palm naming rights sold back to Palm one, which became Palm Inc again. Access has palmOS and Beos.

Palm Inc. continued by developing WebOS which was bought by HP. WebOS has nothing to do with BeOS and there are no BeOS tech being sold because HP doesn't have them, as Palm Inc didn't have them when they were acquired.

melgross: I hadn't realized Apple was interested last time. If they still were, would it be the third time that Apple considered buying Be, Inc. related properties?

As an old BeOS fan, I'd like to know how webOS is related to Be, Inc. Hadn't heard this before. Anyone care to enlighten me?

If I remember correctly Be was sold to palm in the early 2000's I don't think much of BeOs lives on in webOs. I was big into be and webOs doesn't have any of the features I remember and none of the be software runs on it from what I understand. Be was amazing and still would be amazing today. It was decades ahead of other OS's.

just wiki'd to check my facts and it looks like access co owns the beos code now.

Palm bought only Be in order to sue Microsoft.

Be Incorporated Files Suit Against Microsoft for Violations of Antitrust Laws MENLO PARK, Calif.—February 19, 2001—Be Incorporated (Nasdaq: BEOS) announced today it has filed suit against Microsoft Corporation for the destruction of Be’s business resulting from the anticompetitive business practices of Microsoft. The lawsuit alleges, among other claims, that Microsoft harmed Be through a series of illegal exclusionary and anticompetitive acts designed to maintain its monopoly in the Intel-compatible PC operating system market and created exclusive dealing arrangements with PC OEMs prohibiting the sale of PCs with multiple preinstalled operating systems. Be has retained the law firm of Susman Godfrey L.L.P. on a contingent fee basis to represent Be and to seek recovery of damages for the benefit of the company and its stockholders. The suit has been filed in the United States District Court in San Francisco. A copy of the complaint will be made available on Be’s website.